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Yevhen Marchuk was born soon before World War II into a peasant family in Central Ukraine. In 1963,[3] upon graduation from the Kirovohrad Pedagogical Institute, Marchuk was recruited by the KGB and steadily rose through the ranks of that organization. As an operative officer he served first in Kirovohrad Oblast, then in the republican KGB branch in Kiev as an intelligence and secret service officer, for a total of 31 years of service. Marchuk has admitted specializing in secret police functions. However, he claims to have been a humane lawful agent, secretly protecting some Ukrainian dissidents from harsh persecution.[citation needed]

In the early 1990s, Marchuk was one of the first high-level KGB officers who appeared to be loyal to the newly established Ukrainian independence and was one of the reformers of the Ukrainian Secret Service (later SBU) serving as the first Chief of SBU. At first he was appointed the Ukrainian SSR Minister of National Security and Defence. That position held no actual power since local KGB, militsiya, and the army were still subordinated to Moscow until 1991. The Soviet Union then collapsed, ending Marchuk’s service to the KGB, and he was able to participate fully in the Ukrainian independent government. He headed the SBU until 1994.[3]

On December 6, 2001, the Italian prosecutor's office accused Marchuk of violating the UNembargo on supplying arms to various parts of the world. The accusations remained, never investigated nor prosecuted.